Good evening and welcome to the 2023 Paul R. Jones lecture. My name is Lynette over b and I will serve as moderator for today's lecture. We're going to hear from our speaker, John per painter. Followed. Following his lecture, we will hear from Ashley S. K. Davis, a local dance archivist and witness her choreography, will have a Q&A and then a reception. So please stay for the whole thing. So John, Oh, propene at a third, is a dance historian and independent scholar. He received his PhD in performance studies from New York University and his MFA in dance from Southern Methodist University. He's held teaching positions at Florida State University, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, champagne, University of Maryland, College Park and Howard University in Washington DC. He's lectured nationally and internationally and his book, African-American concert dance to Harlem Renaissance and beyond was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2001. He also served as a primary consultant for the PBS documentary film on the history of African-American dance, free to dance. As a dancer and choreographer, he worked with the Hartford ballet company, the DC black Repertory Dance Company, and the Maryland Dance Theater. Most recently he performed invisible, which is called choreographed by visually Zola, founding director of the Urban Bush women, and Nora CIPA Murray, a former company member. Julie McGee, rector of the Paula Jones lecture series, first approached me about having a dance scholar present at this lecture. I immediately thought of John. Our past had crossed several times over the years as we taught dance in the DC metropolitan area. And we're pursuing our PhDs around the same time. And I'd often run into him at the University of Maryland Library. As a black dance historian, I followed his work and was especially excited about the free to dance videos because they told a story of black dance and America. I was intrigued by the story of Edna guy and many others who overcame barriers to pursue and share their passion for dance. So today, John will disseminate many examples of inspirational work by African-American artists. So let's give a warm welcome to John as he presents African-American concert dancers, activism, active advocacy and protests. Thank you. Thank you. And good evening. Okay. I'll begin here. More than 40 years ago I began researching the stories of black dancers and choreographers who struggled to establish careers as quote unquote, legitimate artist on America's quote unquote again, high art concert stages and in theaters around the world. My interest in these individuals grew out of my curiosity about the ways in which artists of prior generations dealt with the realities of being a racial minority in mainstream environments where their presence was often questioned. As I began researching the lives of black dancers and choreographers who were working doing the early part of the 20th century. I quickly realized that their aesthetic aspirations where most often infused with the realization that they were treading on cultural territory that was mined with racial prohibitions at every turn. One of the recurrent themes I found was that many white audience members, critics, and other cultural arbiters responded to these artists efforts to enter the concert dance arena as instances of, to put it bluntly, black people who were failing to stay in their place. That place of course, was the world of popular entertainment that historically consisted of minstrel shows, burlesque, vaudeville, and black musical theater productions. When African-American performance of the early 20th century attempted to engage with certain forms of art, whether it took place in sacrosanct theaters and concert halls or on film. It was viewed by some as a radical act that threatened the white supremacist status quo. As I began to research the racial dynamics of these types of situations, I became aware of the historical roots of a particularly vitriolic form of racial prejudice. That was aimed at the black dancing buddy. I learned that during the 17th century, european slave traders, missionaries and explorers often reacted with disgust when they observed African people dancing. Their documents. Their documents of these encounters are replete with words like lascivious, haven, and devilish. For them, the dance movements they saw reinforce their white supremacist notions of black inferiority. Those seventeenth-century observers came from European cultures where dance practices were characterized by a rigidly held torso, minimal deviation from a vertical plane. The dances they were accustomed to seeing where also characterized by movement where the legs were never been very deeply at the knees. The nascent academic ballet forms of the time, e.g. those at the court of King Louis the 14th of France, privileged linear body configuration and verticality in their aesthetics. The dance practices that white explorers, missionaries, and slave traders saw in Europe were very different from those of African cultures, where dancers often moved with a subtle spine that permitted the torso to explore concave at t. They use their pelvises and hips freely, and they often danced with deeply bent knees. Dance historian Brenda Dixon Gottschall refers to these cultural dichotomies when she discusses the concept of polycentrism in African dance. Quote from the African is standpoint, movement may emanate from any part of the body and two or more centers may operate simultaneously. Polycentrism runs counter to academic European aesthetics, where the ideal is to initiate movement from one locus. The noble lifted upper center of the line torso, well above the pelvis, unquote. In a similar vein, dance historian Jackie Malone speaks of an African dance aesthetic in which the vitality of human existence is reflected in the elastic movement of the knees. Quote, too many Western and Central Africans, flex joints represented life and energy while straightened hips, elbows and knees epitomized rigidity and death. As mentioned before, from their earliest encounters with Africans in the 17th century, europeans reacted negatively to these types of departures from the dance practices they were familiar with. As I delve deeper into the lives of black dancers and choreographers of the early 20th century, I began to find that the conflicts surrounding who should or should not be allowed to perform in certain theatrical environments stemmed from historically entrenched racist ideologies that were constructed to deny the full humanity of an entire race. Consequently, when artists were turned away from studying and performing certain forms of dance, that situation was an extension of the overarching project to dehumanize black people. Political activists and social critic Cornell West speaks of the expansiveness of this uniquely American form of dehumanization that began with slavery and continued over the centuries. In one of his early essays, black striving in a twilight civilization, he states, to put it bluntly, every major institution in American society, churches, universities, courts, Academies of Science, governments, economies, newspapers, magazines, television, film and others attempted to exclude black people from the human family in the name of white supremacist ideology. This unrelenting assault on black humanity produced the fundamental condition of black culture, that of black invisibility and nameless snus, unquote. The primary focus of my research and writing over the years has been to include black dancers and choreographers in the roll call of the disenfranchised, for these artists to assert their right to be accepted in the high art forms of concert dance during the early part of the 20th century was their way of confronting the condition of black invisibility that Cornell West speaks of. In this sense, I believe that their very presence on stages brought with its social and political ramifications that were significant, significant for the time. Again, I am reminded of the sheer power that can accrue to a performer who commands the attention of those in the audience. Particularly during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It seems that these were performers. Declaration would have been, I am here. See me, see my people. Two of the artists I began looking at decades ago were Katherine Dunham in Perl premise. I became aware of the profound influences that both women had on the world of art and culture. And I've always found myself returning to their stories to look once more at the ways in which they reshaped the very idea of what theatrical concert dance could be. I won't spend a great deal of time discussing them today as I have another recent lectures because I want to focus on several younger artists who followed them and took their place at the forefront of arts activism. Here, it will suffice to say that in their lifetimes, Dunham and primase used theatrical concert, dance as an empowering tool to help change the lives of the oppressed through their amalgam, amalgam of art and activism. They confronted, challenged, and protested against racial discrimination in its many forms. They choreograph works that could enlighten audiences about the richness and beauty of African and African Diaspora and cultures. And at the same time they created, they created works that ranged from unsettling social and political commentary and liberationist statements to ones that were created primarily to entertain and spread joy. Every aspect of these women's lives was multifaceted. Both Dunham and premises early training reflected these facets. Beginning in the 1930s in Chicago, Dunham trained with several European American teachers who were progressive enough to accept black students during that period. She studied ballet, early modern dance, and ethnic dance forms. In the early 1840s, primase began studying at the New Dance Group, a progressive art artists collective in New York City. There she studied modern dance and Caribbean dance forms. And when I often discuss the new dance group, I remind the audience that their motto was dance is a weapon. Both artists also undertook academic studies and anthropology that led them to research the dance cultures of Africa and it's diaspora. Dunham field work began in 1935 in the Caribbean and premises began in 1948 in Africa. With their growing body of knowledge about dance in different cultures, they developed their seen critic process whereby they drew from different source material they studied to create a dance language that was new to the theatrical concert dance stage. Here I am reminded of what I said earlier about 17th century europeans reacting to the differences between the dance practices they were familiar with. And those are the Africans they were encountering for the first time. For the most part, the white explorers and missionaries were revolted. Centuries later, black artist like Katherine Dunham in Perl premise could since those same dichotomies, but their responses were different. They studied ballet and modern dance and made their bodies conversant with those movement languages. At the same time, they were familiar with the African-American social dances of the time. And they soon embrace the African and Caribbean dances they learned during their anthropological research. For Dunham, the primary focus of our research was the ritual dances of the Vodafone religion in Haiti. While primase learned African dances like infant USA from the Royal want to see dancers of Rwanda. Both women were consummate cultural alchemists as they amalgamated European, African, African American, Caribbean, and other dance forms in their body of work. Cornell West describes this type of expansive embrace of different cultural elements as a multi-layered cultural hybridity that produces new diaspora, diasporic notions of time, space, and place. He goes on to describe how black culture is unique in that it stems from a people's attempt to create strategies for maintaining their mental sanity, spiritual health, social life, and political struggle based on elements that are characteristically African and American. These drivings, he continues, quote, occur within the whirlwind of white supremacy. That is, as a response to the vicious attacks on black beauty, black intelligence, black moral character, black capability and possibility. Unquote. The work of Katherine Dunham in Perl primase certainly fits into West description of the glaze on death row for African-American art and culture. In addition to their new movement language, another innovative element they brought to the stage was the subject matter that some of their choreography was based on. Their dances of social commentary were also their most unsettling and controversial works. E.g. when Katherine Dunham, his company began touring South America in 1951, they performed Southland and evening length work that explored Americas in human practice of lynching black men and women. The US State Department took note and demanded that she strikes the work from her program for the balance of her tour. Because of the light, it's shit on American racism. Pero primase is controversial works, included her early solos, Strange Fruit. It was her embodiment of a woman's reaction after she, after she has witnessed a lynching. And another of her scathing commentaries on racial oppression was hard time blues, a study of the desperate lives of black sharecroppers in the southern United States. And in another one of my lectures, I go into more detail about Perl premises experiences during that period. Because he was constantly harassed by the FBI, because they expected her of being a communist based on some of the concert she presented and some of the groups she performed for premises and Dunham, its commitment to social justice during the 1940s and 1950s led the way for new generations of black artists to take up the banner of artistic activism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 80s through the civil rights era and the Black Power movement. And up to the present day. At this point, I wanted to focus on one of those artists, Zhao job-related Zoller, a preeminent dancer and choreographer who represents the best in the denim primase lineage. Zola grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, in a household where music was at the center of the family's life. As a young child, she studied ballet for a brief period. However, as one of the few black students in her class, she had to deal with a racial slights that were common during the 1950s. She left that environment and began studying with Joseph Stephenson, a former dancer with Katherine Dunham is company job-related training and Dunham dance technique laid a solid foundation for developing her own approach to performance in choreography. After graduating from high school, she continued her dance training at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where her teachers thought she had the wrong body for ballet. With her sway back and her feet that didn't have the ideal arch and point. Then there were some of the teachers who singled her out as having a big, but obviously 17th century white supremacist dance aesthetics were alive and well during her undergraduate studies. She managed to ignore the negative aspects of those experiences as best she could in order to focus on the elements of her training that she felt would serve her nascent artistic vision. Like Dunham in premiss before her, she absorbed some aspects of ballet and modern dance that she valued and began fusing them with the movement vocabularies of her African-American heritage. After receiving her undergraduate degree, she moved on to pursue graduate studies at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Zoller, educational pursuits and her artistic development. We're taking place during the late 1960s and 1970s, a period of tremendous upheaval in America. The country was being torn apart by urban riots spawned by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, and by the overall discontent within black communities where social injustices and economic inequities had taken there, had taken their toll on people's lives. It was a time when police forces responded with brutal violence to the upheavals in urban communities. And the response to protest against the Vietnam War added an additional violent element to the scene, resulting in instances such as the Kent State massacre. Within these contexts, many African-American dancers and choreographers fail to pressing need like the, like the imperatives of artists felt in earlier years to weave political and social messages into the fabric of their art-making. By the mid 1970s, dollar was studying dance in graduate school when she became heavily influenced by the Black Arts Movement. A grassroots cultural initiative based on the idea that artists should create works that spoke directly to communities of black Americans and radically opposed the hegemony of Western cultural aesthetics. In addition, the function of art should be to convey historical knowledge steeped in black consciousness, to communicate positive cultural messages, and to instill a sense of self-esteem and self-determination in the lives of black Americans. As Zoller embrace these ideas and they became a part of her evolving aesthetic. She decided to take the next important step in her artistic career. After a brief stint of university teaching, she moved to New York City in 1980. She studied and performed with other artists for several years, most notably with Diane McIntyre and her sounds in motion. But in 1940, 1984, she took another major step and formed an all-black old female dance company, Urban Bush women. In order, in order to further explore her own choreographic vision. The movement vocabularies Allah began to develop was based on the source material mentioned before. Dunham technique, ballet, various modern dance techniques and black vernacular dance forms. In addition, her early exploration of material for herself and her company members included what she later described as movement that was quote, unquote, rough hewn. That is, movement that was allowed to be severe, elemental, and lacking superficial decoration. She was fearlessly discarding the softness and lyricism that characterize the aesthetics of ballet and some forms of early modern dance. This was very much in line with the black arts ideology. She had embraced. All of Zola's movement innovations were on display when she and her company members first performed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Lee, Massachusetts during the summer of 1988. Among the works the audience saw was bitter tongue, which is based on us, which was based on Song of Louisiana along poem by Ugandan poet ow caught B Tech. The original poem is a steam commentary on the effects of westernization on traditional American life. It tells a story of a wife's complaint about the abusive way her husband treats her after he has been a way to be educated in the West. When he returns to his native land, he constantly denigrate his wife and every aspect of the traditional culture. He was born into. The food, the ways of dressing, the dancing, anything that speaks of non-Western ways. Zoller is choice of the poem as inspiration for bidder tongue, reflects her wide ranging interests in source material that takes a penetrating look at the oppressive conditions women of color endure around the world as a recurrent theme in several of her works, this examination of women's lives lays bare the psychological, emotional, and physical pain that is often buried beneath patriarchal fabrications of normalcy. The rough Hugh nature of her movement in bitter tongue becomes an analog for combating insufferable conditions that women have endured for too long. And here's a clip of bitter tone. Hi. Why? Right. Hi, hi, hi. In urban bush women's pieces like this. I think of them as depicting women warriors. In bidder tongue. We can also see a more, we can also see or more correctly, we can also hear another element of Java laser aesthetic that would characterize her work over the coming years. Vocalization. Dance historian veto goal is speaks of this element as the self-created music the Zoller incorporates into her work. It includes songs, harmonization, pre gospel or shape note, singing, field hollers, grunts, yields, cries, and speaking. Vocal work like dance technique is a standard part of the company's training and rehearsal process. As all are built her repertoire, she often revisited subject matters such as violence against women, abortion, rape, and incest in works such as womb wars. But in another of her early work, shelter, she also broached the subject of homelessness and environmental disasters. Jolly explains that the idea for shelter came about when she worked for a temp agency during her early days in New York, in the dance, you used a convention she would employ in several of her pieces in years to come. She would speak either live or recorded as part of the sound score. While her company members performed. This new element contributed a more detailed narrative than could have been achieved through movement alone. Part of her monologue in shelter is as follows. Last winter I was working this temp job on the exclusive Upper East Side of New York City that lasted for several months. On my way to and from work every day I walked past a black woman who in spite of subzero, ice and snow, was living on the street. Brown skinned 30 or 40 is a woman with a strong handsome face and a thick head of hair. She lived on top of a square of cardboard and she never asked me for money. I couldn't bring myself to walk by her and not offer her something because her silence, staring presence was palpable. And I could see myself in her. In 2002 when she was setting shelter on the women of the Ailey Company. She spoke about some of the experiences that led her to create the piece. Then the next clip. The idea of shelter came about in two interlocking ways. I was doing a collaboration or had been working with Craig Harris. Craig Harris is a jazz musician and composer that I met when I was at sounds in motion, Diane McIntyre, sounds and motion. And he had an album called Shelter. And I noticed it had a quote of something about looking at homelessness all over the world. And as I began to notice that the homelessness was overwhelming for me coming to New York. I hadn't seen anything like that. And it what was really hard, but was even what was even harder was one day when I realize I stepped over someone and the fact that I could just now dehumanize someone living on the street to the point where I just stepped over them. It meant I didn't see them as a human being anymore. And so the combination of those two things is when I create, it, started thinking about the creation of shelter as a way to humanize myself. Because I think it's dangerous when you can stop singing something, even when it's hard to see. I think it's more dangerous to not see it. And to, in that process, hopefully, whatever audience would see it, it would, it would make them acutely aware of the issue. So that even when you're confronted on the subway or on the street with someone asking for money, you may not know what to do or you may have a choice about what you wanna do, but you have to see it and feel it. I think that's important. When we first began working on shelters and ensemble, urban bush woman, we, I think we started with talking and like what did people see? What did they feel? And then noticing what were the gestures that they saw? What was the physicality that they saw people on the street. And then when I really became interested in was their survival, because I would see people that seemed like they shouldn't be surviving. It looked like they had every AL mental disease or skin rashes and, and yet they were surviving. We were also talking about as a group, the idea of displacement. And that is African descended people. We were displaced in this place. And there was a constant sense of running the fugitive state, the underground state, the way that you, that the groups formed community. Even though it doesn't look like they're in community with the, with the group. We worked a lot talking to research, the research of noticing and watching the research, reading and talking about fugitive states or the ways that we've had to run going from the South to the North. As shelter unfolds, the narrator's delivery reflects the increasing desperation Zoller fields, as her concerns radiate from the microcosm of a single homeless woman to the macrocosm of the planet. The dancers also mirror that desperation as their movement builds to a crescendo of explosive energy toward the end. And this is a short clip off with the elite women doing it as a segment of from shifter walk path to someone who lives on the street. People who live in houses say they are dangerous and crazy. I see myself in them. I see myself making a wrong turn and falling down, down, down off the margin. Being without income too long, losing my apartment, goodwill dried up, get up and go long gone, worn out by red tape changes between a rock and a hard place at the intersection of reduced resources and reverberating rage. Walking, walking, walking. Chapter. Run, run, run, run, run, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. Here. I wanted to refer once more to the writing of Cornell West, in which he captures of the complex nature of African-American art and culture and its dependence on the orality and physicality that expresses an incredibly wide range of human emotions are quoted in length. A central preoccupation of black culture is that of confronting the ontological wounds, psychic scars, and existential bruises of black people while fending off insanity and self annihilation. Black culture consists of being in the world obsessed with black sadness and sorrow, black agony and anguish, black heartache and heartbreak. Without fully succumbing to the numbing effects of such misery. To never allow such misery to have the last word. This is why the or text of black culture is neither a word or a book, not in architectural monument or a legal brief. Instead, it is a guttural cry and a wrenching mon a cry not so much for help. Ask for home. Ammonia, less out of complaint than for recognition. The most profound cultural products. John Coltrane, saxophone solos, James, james Cleveland's gut gospels, Billie Holiday is vocal leaps. Rather than garner Taylor's rhapsodic sermons. James Baldwin's poignant essays, Alvin Ailey's graceful dances, Toni Morrison's dissonant novels transform and trans figure in artistic form. This cry and moan. The deep black meaning of this cry and moan goes back to the indescribable cries of Africans on the slave ships during the cruel transit, transatlantic voyages to America. And the indecipherable moans of enslaved Afro-Americans on Wednesday nights, on Sunday mornings near god forsaken creeks or on wooden benches at prayer meetings in makeshift black churches. This fragile existential arsenal rooted in Silent Tears and weary lament, support black endurance against madness and suicide. The primal black cries and moans lay beer that profoundly tragic comic character of black life. Ironically, they also embody the life preserving content of black styles. Creative ways of fashioning power and strength through the body and language which yield. And this is most important. Black, joy and ecstasy. Katherine Dunham, Southland pearl premises, hard time blues in Strange Fruit Talley Beatty, southern landscape, Alvin Ailey's revelations, blues sweet and massive. Kayla langauge, Java, Zola's bidder tongue and shelter. All of these and so many more are examples of African-American artists creating what Cornell has described in his incisive commentary. And here I want to add the name of the artist. I want to close my discussion with Ronald Kay Brown. Brown grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York. And he recalls how as a two-year-old he found himself incessantly dancing around the house and even in the grocery store, much to his mother's chagrin, he remembers quote, two events happened in second grade that were hints of where the journey might lead me. During Black History Week, I went to school dressed as Arthur Mitchell, the founding director of Dance Theatre of Harlem. And after my class, I went to see Alvin Ailey, American Dance Theater on a school trip. I went home and choreographed dance in a chair too. Nikki Nikki Giovanni, my father's house, unquote. His childhood choreographic attempts were an early indication that he would have an affinity for incorporating poetry and spoken word material into his choreography. Brown also recalls that he had a certain ambivalence about pursuing the serious study of dance. During his high school years, there were periods when he attempted to concentrate on his other interests, riding and journalism as possible career choices. However, the summer following his high school graduation, he decided to enroll in dance classes at Mary Anthony Studio. And that began a period of training and searching that shaped the early stages of his artistic development. In 1985, round formed his company evidence, and he was 19 years old at the time. He named it after a solo he had choreographed a year earlier upon the death of a favorite uncle. He later spoke with the solo as the most heartfelt thing I had ever done. His words are an indication of the central role that themes of family would play in the development of his choreographic voice. Over the years, he would often recount the question one of his friends asked him when he was considering forming a dance company, who is going to tell your grandmother's stories? The question seems to have been incised into the artist's mind, leaving traces of inspiration that aren't from the immediacy of himself and his family to the metaphysical implications of the human family. In an interview shortly after he had formed his company, he reflected on how he arrived at his commitment to make art that was not meant exclusively for an elite audience of concert, dance carnosaurs. He wanted his work to be equally accessible to everyday people because he wanted to tell their stories. And in conjunction with that goal, he began using his choreography to explore sociopolitical issues, including those of race, class, gender, and sexuality. By 1994, when his company was performing at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and Lee Massachusetts, Brown had expanded the company's mission. Not only would the artists perform and teach masterclasses, they would participate in forum is an engaged community members to discuss sociopath, sociopolitical issues that were being explored in the dances they performed with an approach that encouraged the voicing of different points of view. They hope that the forum participants who were acutely affected by the issues, as well as those who are less affected would benefit from the exchanges. This use of art to help initiate change in various communities was an approach that was being explored by other black artists of the period. Most notably Java lay Zoller and her Urban Bush women. And it would continue to be used by socially conscious artists in the coming decades. Brown later alluded to the activist nature of his own work. Quote, when a person steps into the world, he represents his family, teachers, and ancestors, and must move forward with a sense of accountability and responsibility. To be evidence. I wanted evidenced a dance company to present a sense of history and reflection of the human condition to be accompany in which people could see themselves in stories, music, and dance that celebrate who we are, unquote. Here, I am reminded of what I said earlier about the declaration of black artists during the 1930s and 1940s. I am here, see me, see my people. By the mid 1990s, it was also apparent that brown, Brown's creative trajectory would echo the research two stage process of earlier artists like Katherine Dunham in Perl premise. Though he was not a trained social scientists like Dunham in PREMIS, who combine their consummate artistry with their scholarly work. He was developing his own stringent course of study that would take him to Africa, South America, and the Caribbean to research the folkloric and ritual roots of African diaspora dance and music. He later reflected on this spirit saying by 1994, things started to Joe, the integration of text with large powerful movement and gesture and the fusion of traditional West African dance with modern dance began to feel right unquote. He traveled to Senegal and the Ivory Coast that same year, where he not only explored the traditional dances of the people, but he also explored their social and club dances. The rhythms and energy of this source material began to suffuse this movement vocabulary and determined the themes of his dances. As in the case of one of his iconic works, Upside Down. In several of his dances, Brown uses the music of contemporary West African artists. In upside down. He used that a vocalists, Oh moose and Garay from Mali and Nigerian Afro beat artist Fela Kuti. The thematic message of the dance was individual growth that is sustained over a lifetime by, by a caring community. As in several of his works, brown examines the rites of passage that a community celebrates as an individual makes their journey from birth to death. Another thematic element in Brown's growing repertory dealt with his sexuality as a gay black man during a period when aids was a daunting reality in American life. He created several works that delved into same-sex desire, homophobia in black communities, and strategies for caring for others and surviving during the aids crisis. E.g. Better Days was a work that took its name from an iconic New York Bar and dance club that opened in 1972 and catered to a predominantly African-American clientele. In urban communities, gay bars and dance clubs had always function both as social centers, places to establish new friendships, reconfirm existing ones and enjoy both and as notorious places to find partners for fleeting sexual encounters. But by the early 990s, the reality of the aids epidemic had cast a pall over the locales that had typically served as a safe haven for gay men to openly celebrate who they were. In this light, the title, better days, suggests a meaning replete with remembering, remembrance and a sense of loss. Brown also focused on his sexuality in dirt road, a work he created in 1993. And he also revisited themes of family and mortality in that work. In addition, he used an innovative convention that set the dance apart from other dances in his repertoire. Dirt road opened with an introductory cabaret scene in which a tall and lanky drag queen serves as an MC who introduces the other characters. There is the central protagonist, dance by Ron Brown, buddy, his friend and lover and family members, sisters, sister, mother, and father. The scene is set to tell the story of a family's trip down south to attend the funeral of a young male relative who has been shot to death by a white sheriff. The sodium becomes a metaphor for the ways that African Americans cope with a historical injustices that have been visited upon them and the ways they find to heal themselves. However, in dirt road, the families engagement with racial oppression is complicated by other matters. By opening the piece with a gender bending character who seems to be in charge of the evening. Brown purposely places matters of sexual, matters of sexuality on equal footing with matters of race. This expository, expository reference to gay culture helps situate the artist as a gay black man who must deal with race, gender, mortality, and sexuality all at the same time. In this, brown emphasizes the fact that he will in no way compartmentalize his life. Dirt road includes a duet for junior and buddy that is a powerful exploration of how same-sex desire can persist in the face of black family and community taboos against homosexuality. This section reveals the tensions that exist between repression and expression of those desires. And this is an excerpt from dirt road. In a recent email communication, Ron Brown reflected on choreographing to do it in dirt road and its significant, significant today. He said, quote, The duet and dirt road was constructed to illuminate, illuminate the love and trust in a same gender loving relationship. It reflected the dependence and care required during the times when aids and HIV were having a devastating impact on families and loving relationships. Those times are required many of us to become caregivers for friends and lovers, associates, and strangers. 29 years later, we find that individuals can manage their HIV status and the epidemic much better with medication and increased access to resources. The significance of the duet remains vital in illuminating the power of same gender love. There is more hope and possibility of life and love without the looming fear of illness and, or death. The duet is probably more essential now because there's a generation that needs to see the demonstration and celebration of trust, reliability, and strength in same gender, loving relationships, unquote. In June of 2000 to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, presented a tribute to Katherine Dunham to acknowledge her invaluable contributions as an artist, social activist, anthropologist, and humanitarian. In addition, she celebrated her 93rd birthday at the event. During the closing ceremony, the continuing lineage of political and social activism by black dancers and choreographers seemed to come full circle as Ron Brown danced a brief solo before Katherine Dunham, titled in gratitude. Last clip. For Ronald Kay Brown, Java Zoller, pro premiss, Katherine Dunham, and so many others. Activism, advocacy and protest was and continues to be the life's blood that courses through their creative existences. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was very inspirational. Joy that so now we're going to have Ashley SK Davis look at some of our local, a local choreographer who has embraced this social justice and dance in her work. She calls herself an archivist and she's going to share one of her works. And it will be presented and danced by Monique Antonia Bland, who studied at Christina cultural art center. I think I saw Ray Jones, Avery and the audience where she studied for many years. And now she's received a BFA in dance performance from the American musical and dramatics academy. I want to invite Ashley as Kay Davis to come forward and describe her work. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ashley as Kay Davis. I am the executive and artistic director for pieces of a Dream, Inc. I'd like to just start by saying that Dr. over. B, thank you so much for the invitation to come and speak and present it as Dr. sharpener, thank you so much for your work and for your words this evening it was, it was quite wonderful. As mentioned earlier, I'm coming to you as an archivist, which is a newish term for as what we can see is a very old practice. Earlier today, I was speaking with a colleague and I was reminded that my, I reminded myself that I wrote my senior philosophy undergrad thesis on the social and political import of black dance beyond its aesthetic appeal. So at that time, I saw something and I felt something, even though I did not have the words at that time to articulate fully really what it is that I was seeing and what I was experiencing as I watched some of these pioneers of black modern dance. After graduating from college, I came back home and I was busy working and teaching, teaching dance. And I had the opportunity to at that time, I was a student at Christina Kaltura. I had been a graduate of Christian culture. Our center was working at that time as a faculty member and have really wanted to do a piece about what the work by Jill, Scott and Ray at that time appropriately told me, no. It was not conducive to a dance recital that has two 2's and toddlers. Nonetheless, I still had this desire to sell some of these types of stories that actually led to the founding of pieces of a dream. My dance company, pieces of the dream, was founded in 2007. And since then we have done, both I and the choreographers in the company have done a variety of different works. We've done works focused on homelessness, domestic violence, human trafficking, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the 1968 National Guard occupation of the City of Wilmington. I like that one so much I did it twice. One of the ongoing jokes that we had was that you needed to pass out. We should pass out tissue boxes with our programs. At that time, one of the things that was really important to me, I felt like dance could be used as a means not necessarily to answer social questions, but to address some of the issues that we were seeing and experiencing with a vehicle to release some of the stress that we might be feeling and some of the questions that we might have in our head, flash forward to 2020. I don't need to remind you all of the amount of social and political turmoil that was existing in our country. It was a time when I was very frustrated as an artist. Not only was I at home with my, my husband and my children out of the dance studio and trying to teach dance classes on Zoom, if you've never had to do it, I do not recommend it. I especially don't recommend it with toddlers as well. But it was a time that was a challenge at the beginning artistically. And then when we found the news about George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and so many more names I kept adding to the list that was seeming to get longer and longer and longer. I found myself quite stuck. For the first time I was feeling something as an artist that I could not get out. I could not let out of my body. It was in September of that year after the Briana Taylor grand jury, that in an angry rage as I drove from Florence, Alabama where my husband is from, we had been in the city celebrating his grandmother's 80th birthday, surprise celebration of his mother's 60th birthday there about a week apart, as I was driving in a rage back up through Tennessee and Kentucky into West Virginia. Finally, I was able to get the words and some of the movement that angry text message or voice memo that I recorded in my car manifested into a eight minute monologue and solo that I called at that time, untitled eventually became owed to black women, which you all are going to see today is a portion of that 8 min solo, eventually through funding from the Delaware division of the arts and University of Delaware partnership for arts and culture. I was able to expand that 8 min solo into a 45-minute trio. Hot Monique will be sharing one of her pieces, one of her solos in that work. I've called this piece matriarchy. And it's largely focused on the work that the experience of black women having, not only with their mothers, but also with the process of mothering. So with no further ado, I hope you enjoy. Thank you. Yeah. We now have a few minutes for Q&A. Want to bring some bar choreographers and John Carpenter out here and wonder if you have any questions. Let's take about 15 min for our Q&A, and then we will move to the reception. I see some people who were in sweet blackness, the black dancers cinema, if you would like to come up. Marissa, Hi, I'm unhappy. So we just wanted to take a couple of minutes. Did you have any questions from the audience for any of our panelists? So we have Ashley, John per piano, and now I'm Marissa was a dancer and our sweet blackness production. Any questions? And Steve This may I don't know if this is a great question or not, so it'll take me a while to formulate it. I'm becoming familiar with Katherine Dunham and procreate. I'm getting the picture and I understand they have if this is the right word, archaeological roots or anthropological study and roots, yes. Are they the 20s, 30s, 40s. Are we in that zone of time? 1920s, '30s, '40s, 30s and 40s, very good. So it is what we're seeing when we see their work or see them. Is it how to say it? Authentic, meaning? There's a gap in my gigantic gap, of course, in my knowledge between let's say 16, 19, the 1900's project. And then the, when we start to be able to see stuff on film, what happened in between, who was there, who are the names, the people, the stuff in-between or how do I find that stuff? Am I making any sense at all? Yeah. There are books that you can refer to. In my book, I do. I do. I, I do chapters on the foreigners, the people who theatrical concert dancers who came before Katherine Dunham and pero premise. It's starting about in the mid 1920s. Okay? And that's people like Lynette mentioned, Edna guy. There was a young man by the name of Helmsley when field, who was from Yonkers, New York, who established an early African-American dance company. And there are a few others. Now before the, before the '20s, you want to trace blacks and dance back. Before that, you go into popular entertainment. And as, as in the, as in the concert, you saw people like Josephine Baker, But even further back than that minstrel see all of all of the minstrels, Bilbo jingles Robinson, and even going back into minstrel shows, vaudeville. How far back do you wanna go? Marshall Stearns has a good book on that period of Black popular entertainment. All the black musicals of the 18, 18, mid, mid 1980s and 1990s. A number of them, Oriental America shuffle along in 1922. You have to look into all those black musicals and that's where all the black dancers and performers were at that time. They didn't have dance companies in America. Very good. Thank, thank you. The voices, by the way, in that, I forget who it was now, incredible voices of those women in bitter tone. Yes, I guess so, right. Incredible. That you say they had vocal training makes complete sense to me because those are amazing voices that don't just pop up out of nowhere. Oh yeah, yeah. They trained thoroughly. They train and all the vocal techniques they need to do those works. And singing, speaking, right? One screaming. Yeah, clearly, what one final question. What's Jacob's Pillow? I hadn't really oh, I should mention that Jacob's Pillow is the oldest, oldest dance festival in America, established by Ted Shawn and about 19:32, Ted Shawn had an old male dance company and he established that Dance Festival and school and Lee, Massachusetts. And I should add where you saw Jacob's Pillow on the slides. A large portion of what I would, I, would, I talked about in my lecture is drawn from essays that I have written for a Jacob's Pillow website that anybody can go look at. It's called Dance interactive. And it has 2030 different essays about various American dancers that you can just go to and read. And that I have an essay on Java Zoller and one on Ron Brown, which gives you much more extensive information about their lives and careers. So I'm sorry. Are there any other questions? I have a question. Let's can take me a minute to put it together. So in thinking about Alvin Ailey's company, as for many of us, this is thought of as a pinnacle of American concert dance. At least it has been for the past decades. In relationship to companies such as Urban Bush women. Ronnie Harris, fill a Danko companies that as John Myers brown once said to me, she lamented the fact that she felt Philip Danko served as a theater company to elite. And I think of some of the work that Zola was doing with, or is doing with Urban Bush women, as well as Ronnie Harris, which is really in some ways pushing against the ballet aesthetic and embracing an aesthetic. Black aesthetic and African is aesthetic. And how, when we think about all these different companies, how they relate to one another. Because we see Ailey that does build on both the africanus and the ballistic aesthetics. And some of these may be smaller companies that both feed into Ailey and yet are doing something different. I just wonder if you have any thoughts about the relationships among these various choreographers. And I am by no means a subject matter expert on this, but I think that there's a real opportunity to notice that we can do both. There can be space for both, and the same way that there's space for the Philadelphia ballet company. There's also are Philadelphia ballet, but there's also space for ballet x. And so recognizing that these companies are doing different things because on some levels you can hone in and zoom in on it. This is my one niche that I'm very interested in and figuring out this is the way that I would like to perform it and this is the way that I'd like to share my story, my movements, helping people see me. The world and also so reading here is can do that with his company, but then ready high-risk can also set a piece on Alvin Ailey, which means that it can reach out to a much broader audience than the work that he can do. It at a more local level, at a more granular level. And you know, when, when you look at Freddie Harris's work on his work on his company compared to his work on Ailey, it looks different. But I think that there's space in the compendium of American dance for all of those different things. Then I say there are some students here who know Marissa, but I'm not going to just pick on you. Okay? Um, but, um, you know, several who participated in the suite blackness and also have listened to and experiences this program today. And I just wonder what it means to you as far as your understanding of black dance and America, or anything you want to share about your experience in the project and share a little bit. As a dancer, I've always enjoyed watching films like The ways and stormy weather. But I think after doing sweet blackness, I just have such a broader appreciation for just all the struggles and the pain of the people behind those projects. So I think I watched those not just to enjoin, to dance along, but to really just envision myself as what it would have been like to be in those times and tattoo here so many things from different people and not feel like you belong in the space. So I hope that that was a similar experience for anyone who came to the show as well. Thank you. Anyone Any other questions? We have about 5 min. I saw the show and I was curious what it was like for you in the other dancers to have to cover all those different styles. We have some other dancers in the audience too and enough they wanted to share. I can speak for me personally. It was really, really helpful to have instructors who surely gave us a lot of background before we were even able to attempt to perform these dances. We did extensive research, I know specifically for stormy weather, the peace within blackness. We did a lot of watching a film and a lot of research as to what this was truly about. I also think that it really helped that the choreographers put a large emphasis on embodiment of all these performers. And it really helped me understand what these pieces were supposed to be about. Thank you, Chelsea. Any other questions? Thank you all so much. And I just wanted to give a shout out to the student performers as well who I had the pleasure of seeing on Saturday. And you were exceptional. So thank you for that really amazing afternoon. I have a question that maybe tag teams with Steve's question which was really about the past. And I wonder if any of you would like to comment on the future. Because even as choreographers continue to look to the past and I'm, I'm, I've been struck e.g. right? Ballet companies seem really intent on reviving Sleeping Beauty right now, which is kinda curious. But even as we continue to look to the past, to think about revivals, where do you see dance going over the next few years? If you could look into a crystal ball and think about what the emerging trends are. Well, I would just say, I think that one, since 2020, when the racial issues really bubbled to the surface. In dance education specifically, we're looking at how can we value non-western forms as much as we value Western forms of dance. And there's lots of conversation, lots of work is going on in that area. Because for many, many decades it's been that ballet is the foundation of all dance. But moving beyond that, and I think that when we look to the future, we'll see a more deeper understanding of an embracing of all forms of dance as important. So that's one. I absolutely agree. In addition to that, I was thinking about the idea of just kinda celebrating all the various types of movement that are available. And then also the various types of movers that can move. In addition to the work of decolonizing the types of dance that we're teaching and the types of dance that we're celebrating and concert spaces. And recognizing this social dance and indigenous dance forms are just as required, just as much training and study and effort. In addition to that, we need to recognize that people with different types of bodies can also be dancers as well. And I think that that's the space where the discipline is shifting and trying. Not, we're not there yet, but it's a place where we're noticing and we are trying to find what does that mean? What does that mean to allow or to celebrate people who might have different types of bodies on Dan stage. And how, how can they be moved, how can they be movers and how can they be two answers. So it is 629. I was told that I was to go until 630. So I think we're doing well. But I want to thank our panelists. Thank our lecture, thank our choreographer, thank our students for sharing with us, and thank all of you for being a part of this program. I want to give a shout out to Julie McGee, who said invited this whole events that take place, as well as Tracy gents and Kelly O'Rourke who we couldn't do this without. So anyway, please enjoy our reception and we'll be happy to continue our conversation out there. Thank you so much.
2023 Paul R. Jones Distinguished Lecture: John O. Perpener III
From Kelly O'Rourke February 22, 2023
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The Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture honors Paul R. Jones and his gift of African American art to the University of Delaware. Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Annual Lecture underscores the significance of Black arts to humanistic studies and showcases individuals whose contributions to the field are exemplary, interdisciplinary, and inspiring.
The 2023 Paul R. Jones Distinguished Lecture, AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONCERT DANCERS: ACTIVISM, ADVOCACY, AND PROTEST, was delivered by John O. Perpener III, dance historian and scholar. Perpener authored the book African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond and served as a primary consultant and commentator for the PBS documentary “Free to Dance.” He has worked with the Hartford Ballet Company, the D.C. Black Repertory Dance Company and the Maryland Dance Theater.
This program was recorded on February 21, 2023 in the Gore Recital Hall, Roselle Center for the Arts, University of Delaware.
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The 2023 Paul R. Jones Distinguished Lecture, AFRICAN-AMERICAN CONCERT DANCERS: ACTIVISM, ADVOCACY, AND PROTEST, was delivered by John O. Perpener III, dance historian and scholar. Perpener authored the book African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond and served as a primary consultant and commentator for the PBS documentary “Free to Dance.” He has worked with the Hartford Ballet Company, the D.C. Black Repertory Dance Company and the Maryland Dance Theater.
This program was recorded on February 21, 2023 in the Gore Recital Hall, Roselle Center for the Arts, University of Delaware.
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